Coaching for highly sensitive people

You perceive more than others – and you pay for it. Here you learn to steer your sensitivity instead of being steered by it. In Wetzikon or online across Switzerland, in English or German.

Free introductory session Take the self-test first →

In short: Coaching for highly sensitive adults – from a coach who is highly sensitive himself. We work on managing stimulation, setting limits and recovery, in English or German, in Wetzikon or online across Switzerland. 60 minutes, CHF 140 in person or CHF 130 online. If you first want to know whether high sensitivity is the issue for you: take the free HSP test.

Does this sound familiar?

After a full day you absolutely need time for yourself – otherwise you become thin-skinned.
You notice the mood in a room before anyone has said anything.
Open-plan office, shopping centre, loud restaurants: afterwards you are empty.
You keep thinking about conversations for days afterwards.
Criticism hits you harder than you would like to show.
You learned early to adapt – and sometimes no longer know what you want yourself.

If you nodded at most of these points: you are not too sensitive. You process stimuli more thoroughly – and that has a price if nobody has shown you how to budget for it.

I am highly sensitive myself

I found out late – only through my own burnout. Before that I was a development engineer, project manager, IT consultant and team leader, and I considered myself rational and robust. That I process stimuli differently from most people never occurred to me.

Instead I had trained myself in something I now call the chameleon effect: I adapted, became whatever each group needed – and lost touch with myself in the process. That works for a surprisingly long time. Until it does not.

That is why I particularly enjoy working with highly sensitive people today. Not because I have read a book about it, but because I know how the state feels – and what the way back looks like.

My whole story is on About me.

What high sensitivity is – and what it is not

The technical term is sensory processing sensitivity. The psychologist Elaine Aron and her husband Arthur Aron described the trait in 1997 and developed the Highly Sensitive Person Scale to measure it. In her early studies, Elaine Aron estimated the share of highly sensitive people at 15 to 20 per cent; a study by Lionetti and colleagues (2018) placed around 31 per cent of participants in the highly sensitive group.

It describes a more thorough processing of stimuli: if you are highly sensitive, you notice subtleties more strongly, react more intensely to sensory impressions and need more time to process what you have experienced. That applies to beautiful things just as much as to stressful ones.

Not an illness

High sensitivity is not listed in any diagnostic manual. It is a variant of temperament, not a defect and nothing that needs to be treated.

Not an excuse

It explains why some things are harder for you. It does not take away your responsibility for how you deal with them.

Not a superpower

The idea of highly sensitive people as especially empathic, almost psychic beings sells well. It does not stand up to research and helps nobody in everyday life.

Is high sensitivity real – or pseudoscience?

The research is real, but younger and less settled than research on the big personality dimensions. After the Arons’ first studies in 1997, a 2018 study by Lionetti and colleagues found three groups – low, medium and high sensitivity – rather than two. In 2026, Pluess and colleagues published a revised version of the questionnaire, the HSP-R; the free HSP test on check.chw-coaching.ch uses its 18 statements. Much of what circulates online about highly sensitive people goes well beyond what these studies show.

I have put this in context in more depth here: What is high sensitivity? Traits and what the research says

Sources: Aron & Aron (1997), Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 73(2)· Lionetti et al. (2018), Translational Psychiatry 8· Pluess et al. (2026), Personality and Individual Differences 257

Are you highly sensitive? Find out first

Before you book coaching, you can take a self-test for free and anonymously. It does not replace a diagnosis – high sensitivity is not one anyway – but it gives you an orientation and a language for what you experience.

Take the free HSP test

How to read a test result sensibly – and where its limits are – is explained in HSP test results explained.

How we work together

No off-the-shelf programme – the process follows you. This is the thread running through it.

Making sense of it

First we look at what is actually going on for you. Not every kind of exhaustion is high sensitivity – and not every high sensitivity is the real issue.

Recognising sources of overload

We go through your everyday life in concrete terms: which situations really cost you energy, and which have you only learned to expect as draining?

Learning to set limits

The core of the work. Setting boundaries without feeling guilty – and without hardening yourself to do it.

Practising regulation

Concrete techniques for the moment when it gets too much: breathing exercises, body scan, short mindfulness units from the MBSR approach.

Back to yourself

If you have adapted for a long time, the real question is not “How can I take more?” but “What do I actually want?”.

What you take away

to judge your threshold before you cross it
to plan recovery instead of having to earn it afterwards
to say no without justifying yourself for days
to tell the difference between “I can sense this” and “this belongs to me”
to stay present in conversations without losing yourself
to use your perceptiveness where it serves you

This coaching suits you if …

you recognise yourself in the points above
you are often exhausted, and your workload does not explain it
groups and open-plan offices regularly become too much for you
you have noticed that you have been adapting for years
you want to find out whether high sensitivity is the issue for you at all

And the honest boundary: coaching is not psychotherapy. If something lies behind the exhaustion that needs medical or therapeutic help, I will tell you – even if you then do not book sessions with me. More on this: Coaching or therapy?

Practical details

Where: In Wetzikon (Ettenhauserstrasse 46) or online via Zoom – for this topic, online works very well in my experience, especially if travelling already costs you energy. In English or German.
How long: 60 minutes per session.
What it costs: CHF 140 in person, CHF 130 online. Bookable individually or as a package – all details on Coaching packages.
First step: A free introductory session (about 20 minutes) – no strings attached, via Zoom or phone.

Frequently asked questions

Is high sensitivity a diagnosis?

No. High sensitivity is not listed in any diagnostic manual; it is a personality trait, not an illness. If something else lies behind your exhaustion, that belongs with a doctor.

Your sensitivity is not the problem

The problem is that nobody ever showed you how to budget for it. That is exactly what we work on – at your pace.

Free introductory session Coaching in English for Zurich and Zug →

Your progress is my joy.